Upper Orange Water Management Area: Validation and Verification of Existing Lawful Water Use
Scope:
- Compilation of validation data.
- Developing and executing a comprehensive public participation process.
- Interacting with water users and stakeholders to refine the data.
- Determining the extent of existing lawful water use for the entire WMA, for both qualifying and current periods.
- Capturing all spatial and non-spatial data and property details in a fully-searchable database.
- Developing and maintaining a web-based process workflow tracking system.
- Initiating and supporting the Section 33 and Section 35 legal processes.
Client: Department: Water and Sanitation (DWS)
Date: 2011 - 2014
The transition of water use entitlements from the Water Act of 1956 to the National Water Act of 1998 requires the validation and verification of all existing lawful water usage. This process gathers information on, and quantifies the extent of historical and current water usage in an area and supports the administrative, technical and legal workflows required to establish existing lawful water use. An outcome of the project is the provision of data to identify and quantify illegal water use in the project area. GeoAfrika Technologies had the overall project management role for this task in the Upper Orange Water Management Area (WMA) of 10 million hectares. This also entailed management of a team of five specialist sub-contractors to ensure timeous delivery of defined products and outcomes to the client.